Ban the violence, not sports matches!

— 23.03.2018.

Youth Initiative for Human Rights Serbia and Youth Initiative for Human Rights Kosovo strongly condemn baning of the match between women’s junior handball national teams of Serbia and Kosovo due to threats by hooligan groups.

Unfortunately, the Government of the Republic of Serbia has once again withdrawn before the violent and destructive minority in the society, at the expense of those who nurture the values ​​of peace, dialogue and cooperation. Young people, this time athletes, are continuously being deprived of the opportunity for a normal life, joint work and competition.

Those who threatened the public safety or safety of athletes must be prosecuted. Institutions must send a clear message that violence will not be tolerated, and that threats of violence will not affect the process of normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

The normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo can not be achieved only in Brussels between the two presidents, true normalization will come only when two societies get closer to each other, through communication and cooperation, which extremist groups try to disable.

Youth Initiative Serbia and Youth Initiative Kosovo will continue to create opportunities for young people from both societies to meet, talk, create and work together, and support every effort of official Belgrade and Prishtina in this direction.

On occasion of Vladimir Putin’s visit to Serbia on January 17 2019, as civil society organizations and citizens, we have signed this letter in protest of the glorification of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule, a trend that is prominent in Serbia.

Today begins the second fundraising cycle for our campaign War criminals should be silent, with which we collect funds to pay off a fine in the sum of 450.000 Serbian dinars; the fine eight YIHR activists were sentenced to for disturbing the peace by protesting against convicted war criminal Veselin Šljivančanin.